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PETER LUCAS: Trump missed diplomatic coup with liberal media elite

Donald Trump really should have gone bold and appointed -- or reappointed -- Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

That is if he couldn't find another unemployed general to hire.

The Clinton appointment might not have made America great again, but it sure would have neutralized the Washington/New York liberal political and media establishment.

They would have loved it. Instead of being attacked for packing his Cabinet with generals, business leaders and right-wingers, Trump would suddenly have been praised for his sagacity. Liberals would have compared him favorably with Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln's appointment of political rivals to high office -- hence the "team of rivals" concept.

Liberal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln." would have been so moved that she would have written a sequel, only this time calling it, "Team of Rivals Part Two: The Political Genius of Donald Trump." Obama would have done the introduction.

But it was not to be.

Yet there is precedent for such an appointment, had it taken place. President Lincoln in 1860 appointed three political rivals to his cabinet. Obama cited this historic development when he named Hillary Clinton as secretary of state after defeating her for the Democrat nomination for president in 2008.

The precedent goes like this: You run for president and lose, and then the winner appoints you secretary of state.

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It worked for Clinton in 2008 and it could have worked again in 2016. It also worked for John Kerry, who ran for president in 2004 and lost. And it almost worked for Mitt Romney.

Losing presidential candidates need something to do, like Kerry did after losing to George Bush. He was still a U.S. senator but his heart was not in it.

That is why Kerry was so anxious to leave the Senate and become secretary of state following Clinton's departure from the job. Kerry initially wanted the job in 2008, after he endorsed Obama for president but was bumped aside by Obama, who wanted Clinton. Kerry had to wait four years because he was not an Obama rival, and did not fit the Lincoln/Obama/Goodwin narrative. But when the chance came he jumped at it.

Trump could, of course, have kept Kerry on the job, but that would have done little to appease the hurt feelings of all the weeping liberal snowflakes still keening over Clinton's defeat at the hands of a political novice.

And although Kerry does have a war record, having spent four months in Vietnam, it pales in comparison to the war records of the generals Trump is surrounding himself with.

Trump has hired so many generals that there are hardly any left to go on Fox News. Things are so bad at the Fox war front that the cable news network has been reduced to interviewing colonels, majors and captains. Reports have it that they even interviewed a retired army sergeant last week.

It may come as a surprise to some, but Hillary Clinton has something of a combat record too. Recall that she came under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996 when she was first lady. It happened at Tuzla Airport when she and her daughter Chelsea had to run for cover because of sniper fire.

Of course it was fake news, just like her fake Benghazi video story, because it really did not happen. But it made for a good story, at least for a while. Then when the sniper story was found to be fake, Clinton was forced to apologize for the whopper. "So I made a mistake," she said. "It happens."

And don't forget, Clinton was also one of the masterminds behind the NATO bombing of Libya, which led to the killing of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi. And we all know how that turned out.

Sounding like a combination of U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis, Trump's new secretary of defense, and Julius Caesar, Clinton said at the time: "We came, we saw, he died."

The appointment would also have given Clinton the opportunity to re-energize the Clinton Foundation, which has seen its donations shrink following her defeat for the presidency. Play for pay would have been back in vogue at the State Department.

And that, as a businessman, is something Trump would understand. Everyone needs a little side action. And, after all, foreign dignitaries are flocking to rooms and suites at Trump's new Trump International Hotel International Hotel just blocks away from the White House.

Of course the appointment did not happen. Had it, Clinton would have smiled and said, "I'm with him."

Peter Lucas' political column appears Tuesday and Friday. Email him at luke1825@aol.com.

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